


Seer blest

by flyingtothemoon



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: 'you could make a religion outta that!', Angst, Disabled Character, F/M, Fictional Religion & Theology, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, William Wordsworth - Freeform, history of the entire world i guess voice, im so mad that wordsworth is not a tag, lowkey pretentious im sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27804139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingtothemoon/pseuds/flyingtothemoon
Summary: Unto the firstborn son, it gave theeye-that-sees-all.Unto the secondborn son, it gave theear-that-hears-all.Both will know more than any mortal that came before them, and yet neither will ever know enough.
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric & Van Hohenheim, Alphonse Elric/Winry Rockbell, Edward Elric/Ling Yao
Comments: 19
Kudos: 44





	1. PRIMAL SYMPATHY

**Author's Note:**

> hi! thanks again to koo for helping me edit. I admit this one's a bit of a weird egg, so I commend you for reading ;)  
> a short chapter to start, and then we'll get into ed's perspective on it all. 
> 
> in other news, will I ever stop writing fics based on poetry? i think not. (this entire thing is planned out to wordsworth's intimations of immortality, if you want to give that a read)

Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep  
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,  
That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,  
Haunted forever by the eternal mind,—  
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!

* * *

When two children came knocking at its gate for the first time in millennia, something akin to curiosity stirred deep in that eternal void. We cannot really call it “curiosity”, for it was not “curiosity” as humans feel; however, it is quite impossible to capture, in human terms, the nothingness and fullness of infinity.[1]_So for lack of better words, we concede that an _interest_ stirred and awakened that which had lain dormant for so many years. 

Plenty seek out the potentialities, the infinite knowledge, which eternity yields. They come in various states — desperate, arrogant, or, as it is usually, some strange amalgamation of the two. But rarely are they young minds: the kind of mind that is yet to finish forming, and remains elastic enough to shape without breaking.

Adults cannot handle change. They are jade: precious, but obstinate, and liable to shatter at the barest application of force. Children, though? Children can be moulded, can evolve and transform. Children are the bamboo stalks that bend when under pressure to accommodate, adapt, and become something new. Something better.

Thus it was that the void (keeping in mind that even the word ‘void’ is a misnomer) quavered… and then shifted. This time, it will extract its toll, but it will also leave something of the cosmos, of _itself_ , behind.

Unto the firstborn son, it gave the _eye-that-sees-all_.

Unto the secondborn son, it gave the _ear-that-hears-all_.

Both will know more than any mortal that came before them, and yet neither will ever know enough. The price of knowledge should be dear, it surmised, with a feeling analogous to satisfaction.

__

When Alphonse awoke, hollow and empty, he knew immediately that something was wrong. Then he saw his brother, severed of arm and leg, and that emptiness transformed into fear.

Fear morphed into confusion when he heard a soft whisper.

_Winry close that window, it’s pouring outside!_

The Rockbell house was too far for Granny Pinako’s voice to have travelled all the way to Alphonse’s ear, not even accounting for the fact that they were in the basement.

But no matter, he thought. It could only be his brain fabricating distractions from the gory reality at hand.

Afterwards there were other, more immediate concerns — his own lack of corporeal form, being one; his brother’s automail surgery, being the other. Whenever memory of the voice resurfaced, he would dismiss the moment as inopportune. _Next week,_ he’d think. _Next week I’ll tell brother of it._

Yet, weeks became months, and months eventually turned into half a year. Time became an abstraction in the cloistered calm of Resembool. With each passing day, he found it harder and harder to open his mouth and speak his secret. Every time he tried, the words got stuck in his lungs, clogging up his throat until it felt like he could no longer breathe.

As Edward regained use of his limbs, an even greater shock eclipsed any thought of the whisper.

For his brother brought his hands together as if in prayer, and instead the bright light of _alchemy_ lit up the Rockbell house. He then proceeded to speak of a white emptiness, and the great gate that contained all that was, is, and will be. 

It was then the void realized that it had made a slight miscalculation. (A miscalculation — not a mistake, because anything which it ordained was technically an act of fate, and thereby not an error.)

Because they were not meant to remember. The shard of divinity which it had left behind was supposed to have melded faultlessly into their mortal bodies. In the process, a new being should have emerged: a hybrid creature, combining the eternal with the temporal in a state of harmonic perfection.

With the younger son, it had succeeded. As for the other child… he’d been just slightly too old. His mind was pliable enough that it had not rejected the touch of the cosmos, but at the same time, was too mature to have seamlessly fused with its new guest.

That was the only explanation for why _he_ remembered while his brother did not. To contemplate eternity while eternity remained a part of you is to contemplate self-dissolution: to take a part of your own being, severe it, and set it aside to be examined as an alien appendage.

No sane person would be able to abide it for long. Thus, the two parts that made up Alphonse Elric worked together to erase any memory of the Gate — that liminal space of life and death — from his mind. In Edward Elric, however, the celestial and terrestrial elements did not function quite so well. The result was an ungainly mess: a jury-rigged engine waiting to explode.

Poor child, the universe commiserated. There was a reason why mortal prophets so rarely lived to old age.

__

Three years the whispers grew, and three years Alphonse kept it from his brother. But if there’s anything in life that comes close to being a fundamental law — to constituting an axiomatic principle — it’s that the truth will always out. The only thing you can control is when, and perhaps how. Unfortunately for Alphonse, neither was in his power.

Sometime during those three years, he realized that the voices spoke true. Of course, he couldn’t be one hundred percent sure of this, because sometimes they hissed in Xingese, or sang in lilting Aerugean. Being the consummate scientist that he was, Alphonse couldn’t tell Ed when he was still uncertain that he wasn’t, in fact, delusional. Besides, they had so many things to worry about already.

There was enough empirical evidence, however, that he shot bolt upright from where he sat unsleeping in his nightly vigil when he heard a familiar, girlish voice ring loud and clear.

_‘Daddy? What’s going on? Are we going to play?’_

A different voice responded, deeper and masculine, but still one that he recognized.

_‘Do you see that circle on the ground? Daddy needs you to go stand there…_

_And then we’ll play a game.”_

Before he knew it, he was shaking Ed awake.

“What is it Al,” slurred his brother. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Don’t ask me to explain right now, but we need to get to the Tucker house.”

The urgent note in his voice seemed to jolt Ed into alertness.

“The Tucker house…?” He started to ask. But even as he shot Alphonse a look of confusion, Ed was rapidly putting on his clothes — such was the bond of trust that existed between them.

Outside, it was well past witching hour. The moon hung heavy in otherwise clear skies, but you could not see the stars like in Resembool.

They arrived to an empty house, and Alphonse knew they were too late. Large alchemic reactions left behind excess energy, like a distinct footprint that no alchemist would fail to recognize. Here, the air was practically crackling with it.

Ed hadn’t wanted to believe, needed to see it with his own eyes. People are often mistaken when they think that Alphonse is the more idealistic of the two. They see Ed’s acerbic attitude, weigh it against Alphonse’s polished politesse, and assume that he must be the pessimistic brother. However, Ed is an optimist at heart. The transmutation had been his idea, after all.

Alphonse didn’t consider himself to be a pessimist, only a realist. And the reality was they were too late.

Inside they found not father and daughter, but father with a monstrous creature, so clearly in pain.

The man grinned like a proud parent on their child’s first day of school.

“Wonderful, isn’t it?”

Indignant fury flooded through his veins. This hateful little beast had trespassed on the most sacred of realms, the realm that no mortal should ever even contemplate.

The degree of his anger surprised even Alphonse, for he wasn’t just angry at Tucker and what ignoble fate his daughter now suffered. He was angry that the man had seen fit to profane the very laws of nature. Somewhere deep inside of him, a red-hot flame had been lit, and it felt like all the universe stood behind him.

_“Bi—g bro—ther.”_

Gradually, the strange, righteous fury left him, until only a deep sadness remained. The creature was a distorted thing, its eyes empty and soul-quenched. Ed could not stand to look on it, but Alphonse met its gaze, unwavering.

_‘Bro—ther,’_ groaned the creature, once more.

He so hated watching his brother’s heart break. And an optimist’s heart always broke, in the end. It was the second fundamental law which plagued their lives.

As for the first — only after all was said and done did Ed stop to ask: “But Al, how did you know?” And Alphonse was forced to divulge his greatest, and oldest _,_ lie.

“Since the transmutation, I’ve been hearing these… whispers. Voices. At first I thought I was making them up, but, well. I have learned that sometimes they speak the truth.”

With a heavy clunk, his brother slumped onto the ground. Dawn was breaking, and the light of the rising sun illuminated his face just enough for Alphonse to catch the pleading desperation in his eyes. Let this be a poorly-conceived joke, they begged.

“I can’t believe… Would you have hidden this from me our entire lives, if circumstance hadn’t forced your hand?”

He wanted to protest, but he couldn’t honestly say. Maybe he would’ve.

Ed did not speak to him for a day after that. He was too hurt from what had happened, too raw, still bleeding — at least, that’s what Alphonse told himself. Things went back to normal soon enough, their brotherly bond strained but not broken.

Yet, he could not shake the feeling that something of the unquestioning trust which had characterized their relationship so far was now lost.

* * *

[1] From the _Seven Sermons of the Dead_ , by Carl Jung


	2. JUDICANDUS HOMO REUS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New developments, primal fears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops here i am, back on my bullshit! i'd originally planned for... other things to happen. but then i decided this chapter was getting too long, so here you are. ik chronologically ling should've appeared by now, but like, his introduction later just made sense to me. thematically. idk. thanks again to koo for editing!

The fields which with covetous spirit we sold,  
Those beautiful fields, the delight of the day,  
Would have brought us more good than a burthen of gold,  
Could we but have been as contented as they.

Oh ill-judging sire of an innocent son  
Who must now be a wanderer!

* * *

Three years, time lulled on, and three years Ed tried desperately to convince himself that the Stone was more than just some fool’s fantasy.

When they first began traipsing around the country, before the disillusionment set in, it had felt like the opening act to a great adventure. Ed had just done the impossible and soon, he felt he would accomplish the impossible once again — this time by restoring his brother’s body. Such was their youth.

But with each failure, his heart grew just that little bit heavier. As the weeks, months, _years_ passed, it leadened, and it petrified, and it became fossil. Now he was treading water, just managing to keep afloat against five tonnes of brick and mortar that threatened to drag him below the surface. Which is rather ridiculous, because Ed didn’t need bricks for that. His automail already sufficed.

Whatever metaphor you wanted to use, it remained that he, at fifteen, was more tired than any fifteen year old had any right to be.

Three years — a fifth of his life — passed with little result. _Would he die like this?_ Ed wondered, _with his little brother still trapped in a suit of armour?_

Then, almost as if in response, things began to move. It began with a little shove here, a rumour just shy of the truth there, and then suddenly everything was changing at breakneck pace.

Ed remembers vividly how the thread came loose in his ratty, red sweater. He must’ve been four or five years old, and being the inquiring mind that he was, he’d pulled relentlessly at the thread until the very fabric of the sweater began to give out and unravel. Slowly, at first, then all at once.

When he’d realized what was happening, it was too late to reverse the process.

By all accounts he was not a covetous child, yet he had sat on the hard, wooden floor, sobbing his lungs out — crying for the thing he’d so easily, and ignorantly, destroyed. That red sweater had been his favourite. Even for one as young as he, the expiration of something cherished was a tragic event.

“Silly child,” Trisha had sighed, all fond exasperation and hidden amusement. “My silly child, I’ll make you another.”

Hiccups and sniffles.

“But— but it’s not gonna… it’s not gonna be the _same._ ”

And his mother, bless her ever patient soul, folded her hands together in a mock serious fashion before cocking an eyebrow: “Well, then, we’ll just have to use the same thread, won’t we?”

Ed shook his head.

“Darling, just think of it like _alchemy_. If the _materia_ is the same,” she took what remained of the sweater gently from his hands, “and we apply the same process, the same _acta,_ ” she smiled, “then it follows that our product is identical to, or at least unidentifiable from, the original, no?”

That got him to calm down.

( _Prima materia_ — ten years on, and he was still looking for the right thing. The right base substance to correct his hasty mistakes, born of the same deadly curiosity and obstinance.)

A month later, he had a brand new red sweater. Whether it was indeed made of the same material, he could not say, though it did soothe his young soul to know that there was someone who could mend his errors, should he muck things up beyond his ability to fix.

Upon reflection, what Ed had liked was probably the sense of security, of _safety_ , that knowledge left him. Now the sins were his alone, a gaping chasm yawned beneath him. Pitch black and bottomless, it waited patiently to swallow both him and Alphonse if he strayed even one step from the path underfoot. And it was not a path straight and narrow, but thin as a hair and just as fragile.

The first strand to come loose was at Liore. Next, a hole formed where that horrible man did that horrible thing to his own daughter. The hole stretched and tore when Al admitted, with reticence, the whispers he’d been hearing and the lies he’d been telling. Predictably, the whole thing went to pieces after that.

They chased the spider’s thread to its source in their desperation.

Human souls?

Human beings… ?

Of _course_.

Prima materia. _It begets itself, conceives itself, and gives birth to itself_.[1] To do the ultimate work of alchemy — to create life — demanded the ultimate oblation. It had always been there, staring him in the face. _This matter lies before the eyes of all; everybody sees it, touches it, loves it, but knows it not_.[2]

More fool him for thinking there was some kind of loophole.

The Stone was no fantasy. It took no great talent, nor any great ingenuity: only a certain depravity of mind and a particular want for principle to dream up such an idea in the first place. After that, the _acta_ was rather simple; to take a life is easy.

The void nodded along. _Yes_ , it thought, _the child understands_. As a reward, it nudged his mind a little bit further down the right path.

_Truth_ — what was it that Marcoh had said?

_Open your eyes, child. Look with your mind. See the truth which lies behind the truth._

_Go on. Look. It will not harm you._

There was more to the problem, of this Ed was confident. Yet instead of hope, he felt only frustration. All around them the picture was in disarray, the pieces strewn haphazardly on the ground and the full image obscured. They could not make sense of it themselves, and there was no one left to untangle this mess on their behalf.

It sighed in response. _Well, baby steps,_ the void supposed. Two paces forward and one pace back — only natural, for a mortal child so gifted and so lost.

Trisha Elric, good and kind was she, had passed before she could teach her sons how to put it right after tearing it all down. Not unexpectedly, they turned to the next closest approximation for help.

Two hours into the train ride to Dublith, Alphonse was shaking him awake.

“ _Brother._ Brother!”

He was not a heavy sleeper; too many years on the road left him unable to fully relax.

Still, he groaned: “Al, what is it? It’s dark out. What’s so important that it couldn’t have waited until morning?”

Even as he was speaking those words, he felt a twinge of guilt. Al was always waiting until morning, wasn’t he?

“I… heard something strange.”

“Oh?”

Ever since the Tucker incident, Al had taken it upon himself to inform him of everything he heard, as if to somehow compensate for all the years of lying.

It was strange, this new rift between them. Al… Al was good. So very good. His little brother was the best thing in his life — of that, there was no doubt. But Ed struggled to reconcile the image he held in his mind with this new Alphonse, who was withdrawn, and reticent, and sometimes a bit cold. He had not thought it possible for Al to hide something from him so wholly and completely; now he did not know how to talk to him.

No, that’s not quite right.

Some part of him fretted irrationally that _his_ Alphonse had been taken and replaced with an imposter, because there was something just a little inhuman in the glint behind his eyes. Not barbaric, nor hateful. Simply inhuman. And though it was horrible of him, he could not help but admit that, at times, Al scared him. Cuckoo bird — _changeling_ , his instincts whispered. Not my blood, not my own.

“Brother, it was Mr Hughes’s voice. He said something strange. Um. Sugar, Oliver, Eight, Zero, Zero? Do you have any idea what that means?”

Ed tried for a slight smile, but he felt it come out a strained half-grimace.

“No, but it sounds like some sort of code. He’s probably just doing… intelligence things. Don’t worry about it Al,” he murmured, without meeting his eyes. Wretched. This whole fucking thing was a wretched joke. What would Mother say if she knew how he feared his own brother?

She’d probably admonish him, and rightly so. ‘ _The two are you are brothers,_ ’ she’d say. ‘ _Nothing comes in between brothers.’_

Except now he could not shake the feeling of wrongness that marred his every interaction with Al.

_Be not afraid_ , crooned the void. _Be not afraid, child. You have the eternal inside you too._

But it was unheard.

—

“Hughes has retired to the countryside,” Mustang tried to say.

Al wouldn’t let him finish. Of late, he had this talent for sniffing out liars. You could not bullshit him no matter how hard you tried (and this he knew from experience).

“Are you sure, Colonel?”

Ed swallowed and looked away, shuffling his feet a little in discomfort. There it was, the little edge of danger that sometimes lined his voice. Al used to dislike liars, but now he abhorred them with a passion that bordered on neuroticism.

Even Mustang looked a little surprised. Does he feel it too? The icy frigidness that just permeated the air.

“I— ”

Then he sighed. Ed watched the carefully calculated beatific expression drop from his face.

“Brigadier General Hughes is dead. We buried him six days ago. I’m sorry you could not attend.”

The frost spread from the air into his lungs, and suddenly he was rooted to the spot. Why couldn’t he move? Fuck, _why couldn’t he breathe?_

_“_ Fullmetal?”

His organs were frozen — that was the only explanation. He had been frozen from the inside out.

“Fullmetal, come back!”

Behind, he heard the clanking of Al’s footsteps, but they faded away as he outstripped his little brother. There was some advantage to being smaller.

Perhaps he felt that, in running, the blood which had frozen in his veins would thaw, melt, and begin to circulate once more. Increasingly, however, he was struggling to draw breath; each pant came out short and unsatisfactory, like his heart simply refused to work.

Ed fell against a wall, gasping loudly.

“Brother!”

His limbs felt like rubber, they could not hold him.

In a quieter voice, Al spoke: “I… talked to the Colonel. Mr Hughes died the day we left for Dublith.”

There was a heavy, somber quality to his voice that had Ed regretting his earlier anxieties. If he needed proof, then here was evidence of Al’s humanity.

“What is the point of knowing what I know when I can never make sense of it? When it is always too late to do any good?”

Ed wished he had an answer.

“I don’t know, Al… I’m sorry.”

“Why torture me with the prospect of knowledge if, in the end, it should amount to nothing?”

A silence lapsed whereupon Ed carefully considered his answer.

“Knowing and understanding are two different things. We have always known, but not always have we understood. We knew what the Stone was made of. The truth was there in the first texts we read, only we didn’t understand what they meant… 

You know things too, Al — so many things. But you cannot be expected to understand them all. You are only human.”

As he spoke, he swallowed the uncomfortable lump in his throat. “Human” felt like something of a lie, but he forged on anyways.

“We are not gods, Al. We cannot understand everything we know, but we will try. I promise you that, little brother.”

_Yes,_ the void agreed empathically. _Correct, firstborn son._

With a little laugh, it brightened: _you are not gods, but neither are you mortals any longer. You are my children._

_Now open your eyes and see._

* * *

[1] From _Theatrum Chemicum_

[2] Arthur Waite

**Author's Note:**

> i appreciate any and all feedback! also, feel free to gush abt philosophy with me if that's your cup of tea :)


End file.
